


Help Me Walk

by RushAround



Series: Scooter's Crew [1]
Category: The Property of Hate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 01:49:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14864349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RushAround/pseuds/RushAround
Summary: Jo finds Argyle between takes. Kept by a talk with his co-workers, he was late to makeup, and anyone who knows anything on set knows there's no good excuse for that.





	Help Me Walk

She found him broken in a half barrel, draped in rough ropes, rusty nails and splinterful wood from the previous night’s pirate skit. He looked perhaps as struck as the ship set and scenery.

As promised, stage hands curled into fists had dealt him words printed on knuckle printed on blazer and cheekbone and, from a quick shift of bright bronze hair, eye. She sighed at the sight of it. Black eyes were particularly difficult to hide under makeup and lights. Everything could be shrouded in costume and deflected by a smile, even a split lip.

Clearing the jagged bits of broken barrel and clung rope that crowded his collapsed, wall leant figure, she half knelt by him and placed a well manicured hand upon his shoulder. She misjudged, forgetting how much broader his blazer made him look, and brushed his upper arm. She should’ve taken an approximation from the height of his other side, dress shirt peeking through the separated shoulder to sleeve stitch. The garment didn’t matter, he had 3 of the same.

For this exact reason. 

“Argyle.” 

He didn’t respond. He could not or did not want to. She had no patience for either circumstance.

“Argyle. Get up. You don’t have time for this.”

“….You seem to.” He muttered, voice always at attention. To snark, and lie, and talk himself in and out the door, cracking like a whip or a record.

“I’m here for an evening taping. You know that.” She pulled her hand from him. He seemed to notice the absence of it more than most things and lifted his head, stopping to let a throb pass across his shoulders, then continued. A pale brown eye, a squinted blackeye. Though she enjoyed it when he didn’t match in most things - precisely why she often took a glove left out or a sock right off his foot (if she could catch the restless thing.) when she left his apartment in the morning before he awoke - She didn’t have much love for this particular display. 

He seemed to have trouble moving his left arm to brace against the wall and she nearly found herself helping, but he’d only had it caught on a plank and pulled it roughly from thereupon, nearly ruining the already irritated jacket. His other arm did not follow suite and she glanced towards it as he lifted the shoulder and drew the limb close, tucking it against his side, a sign it certainly was not to be used for anything.

“Did they break your arm?” 

“…I had them think they did. I am an actor after all.”

“You are a superb faker.” 

Argyle paused. Glanced at the small woman. Stared at the epicenter of her rose coloured costume. And continued drawing his legs close to himself, knees dusted with dirt, a cheap spat missing it’s partner. He spotted it laying a foot from where he’d been floored by persons far larger and far stronger and not too far but far enoughedly faster than himself, which was strange because Argyle was a coward and cowards were known to have perfected the art of running away.

Perhaps there was a little hero within him yet.

Damn. 

Digging dress heels into the earth, bracing the commisioned arm against the wooden wall, he eased himself from sit to stand. He seized his side when the chance came and rested for a breath or two or few, perfectly aware she was observing him, and lifting no stiff lip to help. Hardly because she did not want to, but all the same. 

“I hope you can walk.” She informed him, and he heard her arms cross. She did so to prevent them from doing anything else. 

“…If not, I’ll collapse in your direction.” He said, amusing himself again with the familiar image of his taller frame squishing the woman beneath it’s weight. 

“With all the love in the world on your back, I’ll be killed.” 

“…I could lighten the load, tell a horrifying story, a terribly offensive joke…” 

“Not from you. You make people laugh, Argyle. It’s what you do.”

It was true. He had just sent sides splitting from his own split sides. His hand tightened and his step faltered, pain rolled over his lower back and ribcage like a lead cube pushed onto a new face. She stopped and watched and waited until it passed and his knees stopped shaking, then proceeded. 

“…I hope you don’t do that on the air.” She spoke again, but drifted when he followed neither her words nor her pace. “Argyle?”

“Jo…” He grit, and wheezed, thankful her name was but a single syllable. “…Help me walk.” 

She crossed her arms again, tightly, gripping handfuls of her sleeve as tightly as he did her heart at times. “You know I can’t.”

“I know…Asking is a fine distraction.” It seemed he had composed himself, though she could imagine bits and pieces dragging from his heels by a wire thin will.

“You’re a fine distraction yourself.”

“And you are a fine focus.” 

Jo smirked against the high collar of her costume, and shook her head, gold bangles bouncing. They inched around the following establishment and approached a trailer blazing with lights from the inside as if daytime itself had been crammed within and was trying to escape via any crack or crux. It certainly did not remind her of anyone. 

“Come on, lets get you under some makeup. You’re on in five."


End file.
